2015, the year of hamburgers

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Where to have the

BEST

Behind the grill at

A burger in the MAKING

burgers?

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BurgersTo make it strait, a hamburger is a

sandwich consisting of one or more cooked patties of ground meat,

usually beef, placed inside a sliced bun. Hamburgers may be cooked in a variety of ways, including pan-frying, barbecuing, and flame-broiling. Hamburgers are often served with lettuce, bacon, tomato, onion, pickles, cheese and condiments as mus-tard, mayonaise, ketchup and chiles.

The term ”burger” can also be applied to the meat patty on its own, especially in the UK where the term ”patty” is rarely used. The term may be prefixed with the

type of meat or meat substitute used, as in ”turkey burger”, ”bison burger”, or ”veggie burger”.

Hamburgers are sold at fast-food restau-rants, diners, and specialty and high-end restaurants (where burgers may sell for several times the cost of a fast-food bur-ger). There are many international and regional variations of the hamburger.

There’s no right way to do the burger. Every restaurant has its own process.

Fredrik LindéEditor, designer, writer, publisher

”Burgers have a way of people that not much food have. It seems able to go across all cul-tures, even where beef aren’t eaten burgers are. Working with this issue has been a great and exciting project, hope you all enjoy!”

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Content

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St atement of copyr ig ht

This magaz ine do es not cont ain or ig ina l textsThe Tais ter i s not a reg is tered t rademark

The Tais ter hold no copyr ig ht w hat s o e verThis publ icat ion i s par t of a s cho ol proj ec t at Örebro Univers i ty

The Taister

Practical tipsBurgers in the making 4-7

The visitBehind the grill at Texas star 8-11

ReviewFive restaurants to visit 12-14

Burger factsDid you know ? ... 15

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Practical Tips

What do you think is the distinc-tion between an okay burger and a great burger? Is it the way that it’s prepared? Could it be the way that you season it? Does it have everything to do with the con-diments? At Johnnie’s Charcoal Broiler, we think it’s all of these things and more. We know bur-gers better than anyone, and whi-le everyone has their own prefe-rences, there are some things that make the hamburgers stand out:

Ingredients

When making a burger, you’ll want to use the freshest and best

ingredients possible. Would you want a burger that is made with horsemeat or so many additives that it doesn’t even qualify as meat? The beef should always be just that – beef; and moreover, it should be fresh. Would you rather eat a burger that is topped with hand-grated cheese, or a burger that has a sli-ce of packaged American cheese

thrown on to it? Do you want your burger topped with green, crispy lettuce, or a wilted, slimy leaf that has clearly seen better

days? Your burger is only as good as the sum of its in-gredients.Seasoning

How many res t aurants do you think simply make

a patty and throw it on the grill without any seasoning? The an-swer is a lot more than you’d think. Since burgers are so easy to make, many other eateries are more than happy to plop them down and let the ”natural flavors” of the meat take over. But that only works if they are using the best meat and, as we’ve discussed above, they usually aren’t. Plus, even great meat can (and should) be enhanced by some quality se-asoning. A plain burger is a sad burger. Since burgers are so easy to make, many other eateries are more than happy to plop them down and let the ”natural flavors”

A burger in the makingBurgers are a distinctly American food. They can be cooked relatively fast, they’re pretty easy to eat on-the-go, and they can taste pretty amazing when you make them right. However, thanks to certain fast food restaurants and nation-wide chain ea-teries, the bar for what most people think of as a good burger has been set pretty low. After all, when commercials for McDonald’s brag about how their burger patties are made of ”pure beef,” you know that we have a problem.

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of the meat take over. But that only works if they are using the best meat and, as we’ve discussed above, they usually aren’t. Plus, even great meat can (and should) be enhanced by some quality se-asoning. A plain burger is a sad burger.

A burger is so much more than a meat patty that’s put between two slices of bread, and if you’re eating food like that you’re serio-usly missing out on some excel-lent dining. The burger joint you go to shouldn’t simply offer you lettuce and tomato, but should have a variety of interesting top-pings. For instance, the Johnnie’s Caesar Burger offers chopped lettuce tossed with (you guessed it!) Caesar salad dressing. We also offer things like chili and our own special sauce, in addition to the more common staples.

The grinder

Buying store-bought ground beef is a crap shoot. You’re never qui-te sure when it was ground, what part of the cow it came from, or even how many different cows are in the package. Not to mention baddies like e.coli, freshness issues, rough handling, and tight shrink-wrap packa-ging that can lead to leaden patties.

If you’ve never ground beef yourself, the task may seem daunting at first, but take it from me: once you grind, you never rewind.

A heavy-duty dedicated electric meat grinder is fantastic, but im-practical unless you own a res-taurant or hunt. I use the Kitche-nAid attachment—with good results—although even a decent hand-cranked model will deliv-er beef worlds better than sto-re-bought.

Don’t have either? You can use food processor. Just dice your meat into 1-inch chunks, spread them on a rimmed baking she-et, put them in the freezer for about 15 minutes until they’re firm but not frozen, then wor-king in 1/2-pound batches, pulse the meat to the desired grind size (about 10 to 12 one-second pul-ses).

Grind your own beef, and not only do you control everything from the meat blend, to the grind size, to the fat content, but even better, you get to tell people that you grind your own beef.

The meat

Whether eaten in the backyard, at a linen-draped table, or behind the wheel of a car, our passion for

the hamburger — perhaps the greatest of American culinary

inventions — never dims. With endless variations of crunchy, gooey, and tangy-sweet toppings,numerous methods of prepara-tion, and seemingly infinite choi-ces for meat and buns, the perfect burger is absolutely anything you want it to be.

Sometimes we crave lean bur-gers; other times, we want the handheld equivalent of a dry-aged steak. The cuts and styles of beef featured here are available in most markets and can be used on their own or blended together. Buy ground meat, or ask your butcher to grind it for you; many supermarket meat counters are equipped for the task.

The bread

Everybody loves a good burger. Big, juicy patties stacked with toppings; greasy little sliders with diced onions; even firm, earthy veggie burgers with av-ocado—they all sate the craving in one way or another. Its uni-versal appeal—Americans alone eat about 50 billion burgers each year—makes this one big-busi-ness sandwich, and astronomical sums have been spent trying to perfect its various components, including, of course, the all-im-portant bun.

Golden-brown brioche has emerged as the hamburger roll of choice at restaurants where words like “artisanal” and “or-ganic” are tossed around like so many housemade pickle slices. Large-scale commercial enter-prises, meanwhile, have settled on buns that are flat on top with a soft texture to match the patty.With that in mind, we present two burger buns, both alike in

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dignity, from opposite sides of the spectrum. The first is a rich, du-rable, brioche of French descent; the second a drool-worthy slider bun, born of fast-food parents. While there are so many other kinds of buns we love (kaiser rolls, sourdough slices, and potato rolls, to name a few), these two repre-sent some of the most interesting concepts in bread-making: Can we create a brioche that’s not too stodgy, and not too buttery? Can we make a squishy, fast-food-style bun that has complex flavor? Can we do it without hard-to-find commercial dough conditioners? Yes, yes, and yes. And you can, too.

Add ons

Have you ever built an amazing burger with all the trimmings, only to have all those toppings come spilling out onto your pla-te (or, worse, on your lap)? The problem isn’t that you’ve got too much on your burger. The pro-blem likely is that you’ve stacked your burger incorrectly. Yes, that

is the most common case. Here is how you should be stacking your burger to avoid the slop.

Ketchup and mustard on the bottom, mayo on the topIf you are going to do more than 1 condiment, then you need to di-vide them up between the top and bottom bun. Otherwise, you end up with a slathery mess which will drip out when you bite into the burger. Mayo has a more delicate texture, so it works better on the top of the bun. But, if you want the strong taste of mustard or ket-chup to hit your mouth first, then put those ones on top.

Pickles below the pattyAny small or irregularly-sized topping should go under the bur-ger patty. This includes pickles, salsa, diced veggies, mushrooms, or olives. This is because they need something to weigh them down or else they would fall out of the burger.

Cheese on top of the pattyCheese is fantastic on a burger, and not just because of the taste.

The stickiness of the cheese helps hold any other toppings in place.

The pattyFood experts recommend letting your burger patty sit for a bit be-fore stacking it up. This is because a traditional beef burger is loaded with saturated fat. Saturated fats liquefy when heated, so the liquid fat will drip all over and make a messy burger; you’ve got to wait for the fat to cool and solidify aga-in. Seeing as how The Beast Bur-ger contains saturated fats too to provide that same juiciness found in real burger patties we’ll under-stand if you just jump straight to stacking this 1/4 pound of beefy.

Tomato nextTomato should always go right on top of the burger patty or cheese. The main reason for this is becau-se tomatoes are slippery, and the rougher texture of the burger (or stickiness of the cheese) will help hold the tomato in place. If you are doing a cheese-less burger, then the juices from the tomato will drip onto the burger and keep

it juicy.

Top it ofGet creative with your condiments! Spread some mashed avocado, horse-radish, vegan mayo, or hot sauce on the bun. Top off your stack and enjoy!

Here is how it stacks up:

• Bun• Ketchup/mustard• Pickles/salsa/

mushrooms/small extras• Patty• Cheese• Tomato• Lettuce• Onion• Bun

An old street food place was recent-ly sold to a lover of hamburgers. In less than one year this old place was

transformed into one of the hottest burger places in town. Here’s a behind the grill visit.

Behind the grill at

Behind the grill at

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Since the boss called himself in today I meet with Antonio. An-tonio has been working at this restaurant from the start, soon to be two full years. He knows this restaurant as well as anyone.

“Even though I’m not eating burgers out anymore, I enjoy serving the best bur-gers in town.”Texas star started out using local produced meat and local pro-duced bread. They bought their

meat from a farm outside of Kumla and did all the grinding

at the restaurant. After a while they found an even tas-tier meat produced in Skövde. The beef is made out of 100% Prime rib. But An-tonio tells me that most important is not the beef itself, but the treatment of all of the raw mate-rial. That is, what he calls, the love which is the foundation of the burger.

I happened to enter the restau-rant when the meat was to be

grinded. Antonio had cut up 100 kilo meat preparing for the grinding. To cut the meat took him almost an hour. 100 kilo makes for 700 burgers. It will last for about two to three days, depending on how many customers will attend.

The average loyal customer of the restaurant is in the age of twenty five to forty. Some of them live outside of Örebro. They even have w e e k l y customers returning from Es-k i l s tu n a , 90 km away. A re-gular day would be

about 160 bur-gers sold, on

weekends about 300. Most drop by at lunch time and around 18–19. When it’s rush time there can be 30 persons waiting in line for their burgers. Guests have com-pared the restaurant with Flippin’ burgers, one of the most spoken about hamburger restaurants in all of Sweden.

Because the low prices at the res-taurants two of the biggest com-petitors are McDonalds and Max. Since their dining is not very fancy they are not really an alter-native to restaurants such as the more expensive restaurants.

The Taister goes behind the grill

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Antonio have done ten years behind a grill

before he started to work at Texas star.

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ReviewFive restaurants to visit in the worldIs it in America? Is it in Germany? Where do the Best Burgers come from?!The Hamburger is probably most often associated with the USA. This is no surprise as it

has become somewhat of a staple in that great nation. However, the

story of the creation of the Ham-burger (one of many stories) is that the Hamburger was brought to America by German immig-rants from (surprise, surprise) Hamburg in the early years of the 20th Century. As a result you would expect the best burgers to come from either America or

Germany right? Well, in this list we have made our selection of the World’s Top 10 Best Burgers taken from recommendations by our Community…and we’ll let you decide if the Americans or Germans make the best bur-gers…or dare we say one of the other nations?! You might be surprised where some of these

juicy burgers come from!

Badmaash, Los Angeles

At the other end of the purist’s spectrum is Badmaash, an In-dian-by-way-of-Canada joint downtown known mostly for serving casual dishes such as chicken tikka poutine and inventively stuffed samosas. Gandhi makes for good wall art here, decked out in neon sunglasses. Badmaash’s burger is a spicy grind of lamb leg cuts, packed loosely and left with just enough juiciness, which itself is no small feat when cooking up a bur-ger with as much sear as this one has. Iceberg lettuce and red onion add some textural crunch, while a toss of cilantro and strong swipe of smoky paprika mayo add fuel to the burger’s fire, while a toasted brioche from Breadbar puts the finishing touches on a burger that’s as unique as it is delicious.

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Mar’sel, Los Angeles

Michael Fiorelli’s reconstructed double-double burger was long an off-menu hit at mar’sel, the upscale ca-sual eatery hidden away at the Terranea Resort in Ranchos Palos Verdes. It eventually earned its rightful place on the everyday menu after Fio-relli left, under the direction of then-executi-ve chef Rebecca Merhej. Now it’s Patina alum Charles Olalia at the helm, but don’t fear: The Downlow burger still anchors the brunch menu — almost literally — thanks to a none-too-shy double wage patty that’s partitioned with aged white cheddar cheese and carameli-zed onions. This one’s by no means a cheap date, though: The Downlow Burger costs a soaring $28.

Patty and Bun, London

Originally a pop-up, Patty and Bun now has three London locations. It has a pas-sionate fan base for its juicy burgers made with high-quality, often British ingredients. Their smoky mayonnai-se is particularly delicious, and the recipe is closely-guarded. The new London Fields location even serves brunch - we love the smoked ox cheek and scrambled egg on a sourdough bun (£6.50).

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Burger Joint, New York

Housed in the shiny, designer Le Parker Meridien hotel, with its marble floors, high ceilings and modern furniture, this is not a typical burger joint. Customers pass reception and continue down a dimly lit, narrow corridor where only a simple neon hamburger sign indicates anything of what lies beyond. In-side is a space that more closely resembles a store room than a restaurant. Beaten up wooden tables and chairs punctuate grubby shelves, cardboard boxes and graffi-ti-strewn walls. The burgers are similarly pared back but taste unbelievably good in spite of (or because of) the decor. Queues stretching out the door and back up to hotel reception complete the sense of postmodern irony.

Shake Shack, New York

I’ve tended to ignore New Yorkers’ claims that Shake Shack is the best burger joint on the planet, because New Yorkers always say everything from New York is the best. Besides, Shake Shack always seemed like an also-ran in the great Five Guys vs In-n-Out, East Coast vs West Coast debate. But one location has popped up in my hometown of DC – so over the holidays I stopped by to see what the fuss was all about. And I will now say with a true Five Guys-loving heart that NYC de-finitely has a strong contender in this race. I or-dered a ShackBurger – one patty with American cheese, lettuce, plum tomato and ShackSauce. The burger was still slightly pink – an unusual treat at a “fast-food” spot. The sauce was creamy and delicio-us. The toppings were fresh. The fries were crinkle-cut & crunchy, making me feel like a kid again, though they were in-finitely superior to my middle-school cafeteria’s version. The root beer on tap was a great finisher!

Five restaurants to visit in the

world

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Burger factsDid you know ? ...

Around the world 32 times

If we arrange all the Hamburgers eaten by Americans in a year in a straight line, it would circle our planet 32 times or more!America is a burger-loving nation with pe-ople consuming 50 billion burgers a year.

Glamburger

Aptly called ”Glamburger,” this burger features bits of edible gold leaf, lobster and caviar. One the most expensive burgers ever created, it also includes ingredients like black truffle, Kobe beef, venison and a duck egg. The burger, which was created in 2014 by Honky Tonk restaurant in Lon-don, will burn a hole in your pocket with its $1,768 price tag!

German connection

Burger is actually the shortened name of Hamburger. The term, Hamburger, was derived from Hamburg steaks introduced in the US by German immigrants.

facts from http://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/foodnews/25-amazing-facts-about-burgers/ss-BBjBWiQ#image=8

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BeaUtIFULIt ’s just sad not to catch what life provides with ,

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Photographer Fredrik Lindéwww.fredriklinde.se